Tsukimaru
by Saito-Soul
Summary: The Prince of the Moon. Each Moon is a new life, a new death, a new pain. Nanaya against the world, against himself.
1. Moon One

Moon One

"One." The boy's eyes glinted briefly in the moonlight as his weapon, a small knife, slid clean through the throat of his victim. An expert killer, the boy turned and did the exact same thing to the figure approaching him from behind. "Two." He continued to count as each shadowed body dropped to the ground, lifeless, as his knife hit their jugulars. "Three, four." There was one figure left, but instead of mindlessly lunging at the boy like the other four had, he stood there, no, rather he levitated there, his blood-red eyes fixated solidly on the boy's every movement. A toothy-grin slowly spread on the boy's otherwise calm face, and in a moment afterwards he had stabbed the figure through the arm, of all places, and slowly traced his knife from the point of impact to his chest.

"Five." The figure's body, instead of bleeding, shattered into hundreds of pieces, falling to the ground below and shattering even further. The boy fell to the ground elegantly and silently, and he began dashing away from the scene, pocketing his knife and crouching closer to the ground as he ran. His eyes had begun glinting in the moonlight again, the night acknowledging his success. The toothy-grin he had misused earlier began to slowly disappear, and he looked back to see multiple figures trailing him not too far behind. His eyes stopped shining again, and he turned quickly, drawing his knife back out of his pocket and landing firmly in front of his pursuers.

They didn't exchange any words, and instead flung themselves all at once straight at the boy, their red eyes challenging him to take them all at once. He seemed to have accepted, quickly dashing between the first three enemies and cutting their throats without even a noticeable movement. The remaining five opponents, realizing their immediate fate when they had challenged this expert assassin, stood there silently, accepting their deaths and allowing the boy to take their lives without any further struggle. The boy didn't hesitate one bit; in a matter of seconds, there were fives newly slain bodies lying on the cold concrete ground, and the boy had begun to sprint away from the scene once more, though he didn't pocket his knife this time.

Lucky for him, no more figures sprang from the eternal darkness surrounding him, though the sun had begun to slowly peek over the horizon, the horizon he could barely see through all of the buildings in the city. "I don't get enough time..." The boy spoke his first words of the night, if you still considered it night, and tucked himself away under a tree in a nearby park. The sun was almost over the buildings now, and the light was pouring over all of the dead bodies that lay askew on the pavement, their lives taken ruthlessly the previous night by a high school boy.

Once the sun had completely risen over the enormous steel trees of the city, the boy slowly rose from his comfortable spot under the tree, beginning to walk away from the sound of the sirens. In a few minutes of leisurely strolling, he was in the city, where the early birds were already hauling themselves to their desk jobs, briefcases in hand, and the garbage men were riding by in their foul-smelling trucks. The boy decided to stop at his favorite spot in the city, the electronics store, where he could hear the news from the TVs and radios, mostly to get information on his next victims. The top story tonight wasn't about some escaped convict or about any gangs that were roughing up a certain part of the town, it was about something that actually interested the boy.

"Our top story; twelve bodies found slaughtered in the back-streets, throats cut wide open. Police have identified it as the work of the infamous serial killer known only by his own letters left behind at some of the scenes as 'Nanaya'. More on this story later on in the morning." The boy smiled, not a full-toothed wild smile, but a small, closed-mouth grin. Hearing about his work on the radio just inspired him even more; the more he killed, the more famous he became. And it wasn't like he was doing anything wrong; anyone or anything that was human definitely deserved to die, even if it resembled a human perfectly. That was something ordinary people would never be able to understand, that he was just paying them back for all of the human lives they had taken in complete secrecy.

"Boy, this Nanaya fella really has something against society, don't you think?" A man asked the boy, Nanaya, from behind him. Nanaya spun around quickly, his blood still hot from the previous night. The man was in his mid 40's, with a gray mustache and balding black and gray hair. He was wearing a khaki suit, and he was holding a briefcase like all of the rest of the early birds. Nanaya only grinned wider, closing his eyes confidently.

"I think that he has a thing against one kind of person in particular...maybe the authorities just haven't figured it out yet." He replied, turning back around and beginning to walk away.

"So you say he's racist or something?" The man asked Nanaya again, slowly following the boy.

"I wouldn't say that...it has more to do with...species." Before the man could ask what he meant by that, Nanaya had disappeared, a small white piece of paper fluttering to the ground where he once stood. The man bent down and picked it up, his eyes widening beyond what they should ever look like, his skin beginning to perspire. All the paper said was one word, one name that represented fear in this modern world. Nanaya.

Down the street, Nanaya was walking calmly through the sea of people, his silver-gray eyes wandering somewhere else, wandering and thinking about where and when his next victim would arrive, how exactly he would kill them, if they had a posse of any kind. His mind was racing with the possibilities, and his mouth began to water; however, his nirvana was cut short when his bent head bumped into a familiar bosom. The black-haired woman, roughly Nanaya's age, set her hands on her hips promptly when spotting who had so rudely bumped into her.

"Shiki, if that's you..." The annoyed voice of Akiha Tohno boomed through Nanaya's ears, his eyes dilating.

"Damnit, you..." Nanaya clenched his fist.

"What do you mean, not happy to see your sister?" Akiha asked him, even more annoyed now. Nanaya didn't say anything back this time; he only reached down into his pocket and drew his knife, looking up and aiming for Akiha's throat.


	2. Moon Two

Moon Two

The rising blade of Nanaya's knife was caught and parried by a similar weapon, almost identical. Nanaya jumped back instinctively, lowering his head, his hair hanging over his face to somewhat shield his identity. The person that stood between the assassin and his target was a dead ringer for the assassin himself; the stature, hair, clothing, everything about him was completely identical to Nanaya. The only real way one could differentiate from the two was by the defender's large glasses that glared in the morning sun, blinding whoever dared to look into his eyes.

"Shiki...that's not..." Akiha was almost completely frozen from almost being killed by who she thought was her brother, though she was still able to move her lips to speak. In front of her stood her brother, but he was in two places at once, squaring off against himself. The farthest one had just tried to cut her throat open, while the closest one, who had a hold of her hand, had just saved her life. It didn't take quite that long to figure out which one of them was her real brother, and her body began to slowly begin to move again. He stepped up beside her real brother, anger flaring in her blue eyes. Her brother, Shiki Tohno, released his grasp of her hand brought his clenched fist up in front of himself, pointing his knife at Nanaya with his other hand.

By now all of the people walking by had realized the dangerous confrontation, and had run to the other side of the street, leaving the whole sidewalk to the three. "Why did you try to kill Akiha?!" Shiki demanded, bending his knees a bit and preparing for a bloody battle. Nanaya picked his head up, brushing the hair out of his eyes with his hand suavely. He didn't reply, and instead winked, jumping to his right and beginning to scale the side of a nearby building, crouching and beginning to run up its side. It was a short building compared to the rest, and he easily made it to the top in a matter of seconds, turning to look down at Akiha and Shiki with a mocking grin lingering on his sleepy-looking face.

"Shiki...soon, you won't be Shiki anymore!" Nanaya shouted down to them, playing with the knife in his fingers, expertly avoiding cutting himself without even looking at his hand. "I will be the sole heir to that name, but for now you may call what you wish," he pocketed his knife once again, walking over onto the middle of the building's roof, disappearing from their sight.

Down on the ground, the people who had avoided being close to the three slowly began to pour back onto that side of the street, not minding or caring to ask Shiki or Akiha what had happened. They only strolled casually on past them, some rushing so that they wouldn't be late, others stirring their coffee while speaking to their other early bird friends on their cell-phones. It was amazing how so many people could ignore a scene that had almost become a murder, how many people could ignore a teenager running up the side of a building. At time like this, humans are the worst things that exist.

-

The last of the orange sun was fading away on the hidden horizon, and Nanaya had already drawn his knife from his pocket, sitting comfortably on a bench along a walkway in the park. There were still a few people out here this early in the night; they were mostly young couples, though there were a few teenagers about Nanaya's age that were looming around, smoking and drinking as much as they could before they got back home, where they would probably get found out by their parents eventually. Humans like these didn't concern Nanaya one bit; in fact, most humans didn't concern him at all, though there was one exception. The only humans that Nanaya ever cared about were those foolish enough to get themselves caught by something that wasn't human.

That was exactly why Nanaya hung out in the park; non-humans, vampires, tended to get close to their victims beforehand, and in the evening a lot of couples came to the park. It had been an hour or two since the sun had set, and Nanaya could just barely see the stars through the trees, since there were no lights in this park. By now the teenagers had cleared out and gone home to their parents, and most of the couples had settled down in hotels, though there were still a few stragglers.

That was when Nanaya saw it; an ominous red glow only a few yards away through the trees, signaling that he was too late to save the victim, but not late enough to avenge them. He was to his feet and through the thick of the trees in a second, spotting a woman standing over a man, who was limply laying on the floor. The only thing Nanaya could make out about the woman was that she had medium-length light blue hair, and her eyes were a piercing red.

After noticing her eyes, Nanaya didn't hesitate one bit, lunging right at her and swinging his knife for her throat. She evaded quickly, the knife managing only to cut a small chunk of her hair off. The man on the ground was beginning to tremble, and when Nanaya turned to look at him for only a second, the woman disappeared completely from sight. Nanaya kneeled beside the man, clenching his teeth, and slit the man's throat gently, his trembling ceasing. "You're lucky, you didn't have to feel the pain of becoming one of them, especially on a night like this.." Nanaya smirked, getting to his feet, and gazed up at the stars again. "A night with no moon...is barely a night at all."


End file.
